Upon reading Stoler's article about the colonial authorities sanctioning of sexual liasons and by extension, the body, it reminded me of how things hasn't changed that much.
Stoler relates the issue of metissage to this control over sexuality (of both Whites and Natives) when colonial authorities linked "domestic arrangements to the public order, family to the state, sex to subversion, and psychological essence to racial type" (516). Anyone who has taken Singapore Studies modules [Or even National Education classes] or Sociological modules would already know how family is seen as the basic unit of nation.
The emphasis on the private/intimate lives of the individual basically implies that the body [more importantly, the female body] belongs to the State. Anyone remembers the reiteration of the "National Service"/ "civic duty" of women at a recent politician's speech? To paraphrase everything: "Go on, have kids because our population is decreasing and our country needs you." Of course, we have government policies (in the form of "baby bonuses) that encourage this. Within the colonial period of course, the sexual liasons of the European men were also contained and monitored within direct/indirect policies (for instance, policies that intially allowed concubinage, and policies that allowed for the entry of European women into colonies).
The body tied so closely to the nation state reflects the biopolitics/body politics prevalent during the colonial period and carried through till today.
Stoler relates the issue of metissage to this control over sexuality (of both Whites and Natives) when colonial authorities linked "domestic arrangements to the public order, family to the state, sex to subversion, and psychological essence to racial type" (516). Anyone who has taken Singapore Studies modules [Or even National Education classes] or Sociological modules would already know how family is seen as the basic unit of nation.
The emphasis on the private/intimate lives of the individual basically implies that the body [more importantly, the female body] belongs to the State. Anyone remembers the reiteration of the "National Service"/ "civic duty" of women at a recent politician's speech? To paraphrase everything: "Go on, have kids because our population is decreasing and our country needs you." Of course, we have government policies (in the form of "baby bonuses) that encourage this. Within the colonial period of course, the sexual liasons of the European men were also contained and monitored within direct/indirect policies (for instance, policies that intially allowed concubinage, and policies that allowed for the entry of European women into colonies).
The body tied so closely to the nation state reflects the biopolitics/body politics prevalent during the colonial period and carried through till today.
This brings to mind the viability of biopolitics/ body politics then and now. Within the article, we get a sense that these sanctioning of “sexual deviancy” is met with opposition (rightfully so, since it merely recodes race). But the fact that such control over the body still remains till this day suggests a few things to me. Firstly, that this is a good form of governance. Secondly, the seeming impossibility to “own” your own body for even with the progress of time, we have yet to deviate from biopolitics/ body politics. From the moment of birth everyone is tagged, institutionalized and run within the cog of the machine. Instead of running within the colonial machine, of course, we’re stuck is the machine of the nation-state. How depressssing.
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Wonderful, Nadia!
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